Asef Bayat

Asef Bayat is professor of sociology and middle-east studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His books include Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford University Press, 2007); Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2010); and (with Linda Herrera) Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Egypt, and the post-Islamist middle east

The portrayal of Egypt’s uprising in terms of its potential capture by Islamists is doubly misleading, says Asef Bayat: for this misses both the true character of the people’s movement and the transformation of the Arab world’s religious politics.

By Asef Bayat

/ 8 Feb 2011

Iran: torch of fire, politics of fun

The doctrinal contempt of Islamist regimes for popular festivals such as the Iranian nowrooz (new year) extends to suspicion of every expression of spontaneous life. The result is to conjure the very rituals of resistance they fear, says Asef Bayat.

By Asef Bayat

/ 24 Mar 2010

Iran: a green wave for life and liberty

How can we make sense of the current political crisis in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Why is that after a decade of a seeming silence, we see today a

By Asef Bayat

/ 7 Jul 2009

Democracy and the Muslim world: the “post-Islamist” turn

The debate about the fragility of democracy in Islamic societies - with a particular focus on the middle east - has grown in intensity throughout the 2000s. It has been

By Asef Bayat

/ 6 Mar 2009